“The Conjuring” franchise’s final movie, “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” hit theatres on Sep. 5, earning a franchise-best of $8.5 million in a Thursday preview and is now projected to beat their record opening of $65 million. For horror lovers such as myself, this movie was certainly not the best of the series, but a decent close to story of the Warrens.
The film opens by showing Ed and Lorraine Warren investigating one of their first cases, where a single mistake almost causes irreversible harm to the young couple. From there, the story shifts to 1986, inside the Smurl family home as they prepare for their eldest daughter Heather’s convocation.
The movie starts off in the cliche way that many horror movies do: convincing the audience that there is only light on the horizon. That is very quickly proven wrong when a gifted item to Heather begins to release hell within the Smurl home.
However, the item does not stay too long. Instead, we jump into the current lives of Ed, Lorraine and their daughter Judy. Ed and Lorraine have retired because of Ed’s lingering heart condition from a past exorcism. Despite the slower pace, I did not mind the more domestic feel here. Learning about Judy’s boyfriend, her own abilities and Lorraine’s lessons for her added a sweet layer to the film.
We then focus back on the Smurls, where the jump scares are as predictable as they come. Eventually, after growing sick of the weird feelings in their home, Heather and her younger sister Dawn decide to take action into their own hands, which only made the situation worse. This scene plays out like a recycled Annabelle moment: ‘Wow, you threw it away!! Wow, that did not help, how shocking.’
The film goes back to the Warren’s where Father Gordon, a long-standing figure in the franchise, requests the Warrens expertise on behalf of the Smurls. They decline because of Ed’s condition; however, that stance does not last long. Because, after being forcefully roped back into the world of the supernatural, the focus nearly shifts completely to the Warrens come the third act. This made the scenes of Heather and her family pointless.
Though the audience knows of the connection between the Warrens and what the Smurls are experiencing, we learn that it goes way deeper than originally thought.
The rest of the movie plays out in the typical “The Conjuring” fashion of how they defeat the evil entity — but now they do it as a family.
Sophomore nursing major Ryleigh Wallette describes her feelings towards the movie.
“It was a pretty classic Conjuring movie; not the best horror movie I’ve seen by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely entertaining,” Wallette said.
I would not say “The Conjuring: Last Rites” is a must watch. The opening text sets this movie and the case to be the evilest of anything the Warrens have previously encountered, but it does not live up to that. There was frequent jumping around and a lack of focus, but that is to be expected when trying to portray a sweet ending of the Warren’s story while also fitting in scary demons. Overall, the movie was not terrible, but also not anything to write home about.
